His whole body burned, his breathing quickened, his head was swaddled in insupportable agonies-it had to be streetsickness. He tried rubbing in half a jar of balm, to no effect; he had someone pare a few bright red pimples off his back, but his brain was still fried, bubbles still foaming out of his mouth. Hands in sleeves, he took a few deeply discontented turns through the streets and back, then kicked a rush basket about ten feet:

"I'm off!"

A few days later, he came back from the countryside, his fire somewhat cooled, his face covered in smiles. He took out a baba cake from the mountains and divided it amongst his colleagues to give them a taste of something new.

What had happened was a ligelang of his in Zhangjia District, a widow twelve years older than him, as big as a bucket, had quelled his fires- and then some.

The prefectural commission was a good two days' journey from Maqiao and he couldn't often go back to cool his humors. He reported to his senior officer that he had streetsickness, that everyone from Maqiao got this illness, that it stopped them enjoying the good life. He hoped he could return to the mountains to work on his two mw of paddy fields. The senior officer just thought he wasn't happy looking after horses and changed his job for him, making him custodian at the Public Security Station. In the eyes of his colleagues, he was a little unappreciative of this favor from his superior, as on the second day he reported for duty he was actually rude to the department chief's wife. At the time in question, the wife had been examining a sweater on the bed, her buttocks sticking up very high as her hands gripped the sides of the bed. Rather pleased by this, Benyi gave those arresting buttocks a pat: "What're you looking at?"

The astounded woman went bright red and started to yell at him: "Where did you crawl out from, you filthy turtle's egg? What d'you think you're doing?"

"Why're you laying into me like that?" He asked a secretary standing by: "Why doesn't someone wash her mouth out? All I did was have a little pat…"

"Still full of it! Shameless!"

"What did I say?"

As soon as he got upset, Benyi started to talk in Maqiao dialect; he could talk till he was blue in the face and still no one would be able to understand him. But he saw that filthy woman move off to cower in a corner and heard her clearly, distinctly enunciate one word:

"Bumpkin!"

Afterwards, the leader came looking for Benyi to have a word. Benyi had no idea what the leader could possibly have to talk to him about. How absurd-did this count as a mistake? Was this taking liberties? All he'd done was pat with his hand, he could pat where he wanted, in his village whose buttocks couldn't he pat? But he controlled himself, didn't wrangle with the leader.

The leader declared he wanted him to examine the roots of his own criminally erroneous thinking.

"There are no roots, I'm just streetsick. Once I get onto those streets, my fires rise, my scalp hurts, when I wake up every morning it's like I've been beaten upside the head."

"What're you talking about?"

"I said, I'm streetsick."

"What d'you mean, streetsick?"

The leader wasn't from Maqiao and didn't understand what street-sickness was, neither did he believe Benyi's explanations and snapped back that Benyi was stalling him with gibberish. But this cloud's silver lining brought Benyi great joy: that one pat absolved him from further punishment, lost him his commission and meant he could go back home! From now on, every day he could drink ginger salted bean tea, every day he could sleep in! When he received the order to return to the countryside, he had a very satisfactory yell at his wife, then went alone to the tavern to wolf down a bowl of shredded pork noodles and three ounces of wine.

Years later, on a visit to the county seat to attend a cadre meeting, he bumped into a certain Hu, one of his own old colleagues from the prefectural commission, a junior reporter in days gone by. This Hu was now an official who'd discussed at the meeting "the three crux issues," "the four links," and "the five implementations," all of which were completely lost on Benyi. Hu's way of smoking, of arranging his hair up and to the right, of gargling after meals and peeling his apples with a small knife all seemed very alien to Benyi, and filled him with amazement and envy. He felt all at sea in the guestroom at the hostel where his old colleague lodged, unable to look at the bright electric lamp with his eyes open.

"Hey, you were unlucky, you know, way back then, they shouldn't have punished you so hard for such a small thing." Hu mused on the past in the light of the present, passing him an apple he'd already peeled.

" 'Snot important, not important at all."

His old colleague heaved a sigh: "You're no good now, your cultural level's too low, it wouldn't be right for you to come back on the team. D'you have kids?"

"A boy and a girl."

"Good, good; how's the harvest?"

" 'Bout the same as you, still got food in the pot."

"Good, good; are your folks still alive?"

"Been sent up to the yellow earth commune work team in the sky."

"You still like your little joke, I see. Where's your wife from?"

"She's from Changle, she's nice enough, bit of a temper though."

"Good, good-good to have a bit of a temper."

Benyi didn't know what this "good, good" was supposed to mean; after these careful inquiries into his situation, he thought Hu was going to arrange something for him, do him some favor, but he never heard anything about it in the end. That was a happy evening, though. He was grateful to his old colleague for not having forgotten him, for being polite to him still, for giving him ten catties' worth of grain coupons. Thinking back to the good, round rump of that section chief's wife all those years back still sent him off on a happy spirit journey. The day the meeting broke up, his old colleague wanted to keep him there for another evening. Benyi wouldn't agree. He said he was getting on now, that his streetsickness was even worse, that he'd better go back; his old colleague wanted to send him back on his way in his jeep, but still Benyi waved his hands in refusal. He was afraid of the smell of gasoline, he said, if ever his path took him by a gas station, he usually had to make a long, twisty detour; there was no way he could sit in a car. A cadre standing nearby affirmed that he wasn't just being polite, that a lot of people from round Maqiao were afraid of gasoline and would rather walk than go by car. The County Automobile Transportation Company had, not long ago, extended the long-distance route to Longjia Bay, intending to make life more convenient for the masses, but since, contrary to all expectations, barely a handful of people had taken the bus in the past month, they'd had to cancel the regular bus service.

Only then did Old Hu believe him, waving as he watched Benyi's silhouette set off down the road.